Effect evaluation of Geoffroea decorticans fruit extracts on Xenopus laevis embryos

GABRIELA C. SOMAINI; MANUEL J. AYBAR; NANCY VERA; CELESTE TRÍBULO

Tafí del Valle, Tucumán

Congreso; XXXIV Reunión Anual de la Asociación de Biología de Tucumán; 2017

Asociación de Biología de Tucumán

In recent years the study of natural compounds found in plants has gained importance. These compounds promise to be a huge source of regulators of different signaling pathways such as wnt/β-catenin. Xenopus embryos are a very efficient model to analyze the role of these compounds. In this work fruits of Geoffroea decorticans were used to obtain an aqueous extract (EA) whose content of total phenolic compounds determined by the Folin-Ciocalteu method was 3.24 mg EAG/g and that of flavonoids was 0.133 mg EQ/g. An EA acid hydrolysis was performed and a subsequent extraction with CHCl₃ and AcOEt obtaining chloroform extract (EC) and ethyl acetate extract (EAc). Xenopus embryos were treated with different concentrations of extracts from stage 3 to stage 10.5 and then allowed to develop until stage 32. Treatments with EA (10, 20 and 30 mg/ml), EC and EAc (1 mg/ml) lead to an abnormal development of 10, 47 and 84% of the embryos respectively with ventralized phenotypes. On the other hand, wnt/β-catenin pathway was activated using LiCl which produces dorsoanteriorized phenotypes. The embryos were incubated with EA until stage 6 and treated with LiCl for 10 minutes and then incubated again with EA until stage 10.5 and allowed to develop to stage 32. The observed phenotypes were classified according to the dorso-anterior index (DAI). A higher DAI indicates a higher rate of dorsoanteriorized embryos. Embryos treated with LiCl showed DAI=10 while embryos treated with LiCl and EA demonstrated a significantly DAI decrease (DAI=6.09). These results showed that Geoffroea decorticans extracts produce morphological phenotypes compatible with wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway inhibition.